Off the Wall on Swimming World Radio Debuts; Hosts Nathan Jendrick, Felipe Delgado

PHOENIX, Arizona, June 18. THIS week, Off the Wall makes its debut on Swimming World Radio with a thorough discussion on foreign athletes training in the United States, the exorbitant number of Olympic Trials participants and an interview with Rowdy Gaines about those topics and many others.

This Internet program, hosted by Nathan Jendrick along with co-host Olympian Felipe Delgado, will be available on a regular basis on SwimmingWorld.com and soon via iTunes.

Off the Wall is built around the mission of creating conversation and exploring storylines in and out of the pool. Rather than reality television, we would love for the proverbial “water cooler” conversation to be about the sport of swimming more often than one week every four years. We also firmly believe that some of the best, most passionate people in the entire athletic world are involved in this sport, and we want to tell their stories.

Many have long argued that poker gets television time and the attention because it does a tremendous job creating storylines that people care about. Poker broadcasts create characters and they give people reasons to cheer for anyone at the “Final Table.”

Swimming has these characters, has these relatable stories, and has the potential to have a fan base outside of the Olympic Games. If Off the Wall can help create even a little bit of awareness about what we've got in our sport to the wider sports audience, we will consider that a huge success.

When it comes to interviews on the program, our goal is to provide the most in-depth and entertaining interviews in the sport that contain a wide base of substance. On our first show, for instance, Olympic legend Rowdy Gaines joins us and discusses not only his opinion on upcoming events, but also how his comments to the Wall Street Journal were taken out of context. We are already proud that this show offers a platform as it weaves its way into mainstream media.

We want to set a new norm and break out from the typical, cookie-cutter interviews.

Everyone has seen those pre-game interviews for the NFL where a player is asked: “What's on your mind today?” The near verbatim response more often than not is: “We're going out there to play hard and win.”

And, let's not forget a familiar NASCAR interview: “How are you feeling about this race?” The wildly talented driver often responds: “Well we got a real good team and a real good car and we're running some real good tires so we're going to go run a real good race.”

Nice, but we've heard it before, haven't we? Yes, athletes like to win. Athletes train hard. But what else?

Felipe and Nathan are going to ask those questions in a professional, entertaining way, and allow our listeners to close out the show feeling they're better connected to our sport, better connected to our athletes, more aware of our storylines, and-hopefully-prepared to debate topics that are important to all of us.

Felipe and Nathan won't always share the popular opinion. We may, in turn, ruffle some feathers, so to speak. And if you want to share your opinion with us and debate with us as well as amongst your friends, we invite you to do so.

We hope you enjoy our first show featuring Rowdy Gaines, Training Foreign Athletes, and the growing numbers of swimmers at Olympic Trials.

(Right click or option-click this link and choose “Save As…” to download an .mp3 copy of this show.)